There isn’t a Labour supporter who wouldn’t rather see a Labour Government than David Cameron’s Conservatives take over. That isn’t at issue.

Above all I appreciate how upset people will be that we couldn’t thwart the Tories.

But I’m convinced that winning clear support has to be better than resorting to temporary and fragile stitch-ups.

We all want to regain a majority Government as soon as possible, where, under new leadership, Labour regains the nation’s trust and support.

It would be a betrayal of our constituents if we failed to win over the voters to carry us back into government and avoid being on the fringes of politics for the next two decades.

A clever internal fix is not the politics of the future.

The behaviour of the Lib Dems has been nothing short of scandalous. This kind of chaos – with the Lib Dems playing the pivotal role in a bid to get anything they wanted and prevent anything they didn’t – is what we would get if we had fully-fledged PR.

To have a functioning democracy, you need the consent of the people. You need stability that allows you to make decisions – not vote by vote, night by night in the House of Commons, but in the long term. And you need to last long enough for the electorate to be able to make a sensible decision when we come to voting again.

The electorate has to be able – as painful as it is – to throw out the Government.

I don’t want Labour to be punished for having hung on to office in the face of a rejection by a substantial proportion of the voters.

I want an open contest for the new Labour leader. A real debate about what we stand for; whose voice we are reflecting in Parliament; and a radical vision of the future that responds to the needs and aspirations of the British.

Politics has to be more than manoeuvres inside the Palace of Westminster, or deals struck between political parties who normally wouldn’t give each other the time of day.

Reconnecting with people across the country, creating a real trust in and belief that politics can change the world from the bottom up, is the way forward.